Shamed in the Sands

by Sharon Kendrick

  Would it terrify him if she told him that yes, it did? That it felt unbelievably profound to have his flesh inside her, while their combined flesh grew deep in her belly. Much too profound for comfort. She pressed her lips against the dark rasp of his jaw.

  ‘I don’t really have enough experience for comparison,’ she whispered.

  He tilted her face upwards so that all she could see was the gleam of his silver gaze. ‘That sounds like a blatant invitation to provide you with a little more.’

  ‘D-does it?’

  ‘Mmm. So I think I’d better do just that, don’t you?’

  She gasped as he began a slow, sweet rhythm inside her. Her fingertips slid greedily over the silken skin which cloaked his moving muscles. Eagerly, she began to explore the contours of his body—the power of his rock-hard legs and the taut globes of his buttocks.

  She felt part of him.

  All of him.

  She felt in that moment as if anything was possible.

  ‘Gabe,’ she moaned, her body beginning to tense.

  His mouth grazed hers. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I c-can’t.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he urged again.

  ‘Oh. Oh!’

  Gabe felt her buck beneath him in helpless rapture. His mouth came down hard on hers as her back arched, his fingers tightening over her narrow hips. He became aware of the softness of her belly as he pressed against her and then he let go—spilling his seed into her with each long and exquisite thrust.

  For a while he was aware of nothing other than the fading spasms deep within his body and a sense of emptiness and of torpor. Automatically, he rolled away onto the other side of the bed where he lay on top of the rumpled sheet and sucked mouthfuls of air back into his lungs. His eyelids felt as if they’d been weighted with lead. He wanted to sleep. To sleep for a hundred years. To hold on to a sensation which felt peculiarly close to contentment.

  But old habits died hard and he fought the feeling and the warm place which was beckoning to him, automatically replacing it with ice-cold logic. All he was experiencing was the stupefying effect of hormones as his body gathered up its resources to make love to her again. It was sex, that was all. Surprisingly good sex—but nothing more than that. How could it ever be more than that?

  Meeting her bright blue gaze, he flickered her a non-commital smile.

  ‘What a perfect way to begin a honeymoon,’ he drawled.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS A honeymoon of sorts.

  Leila supposed that some people might even have considered it a successful honeymoon. With time and money at his disposal, Gabe set about showing her a London she’d only ever seen in films or books—and the famous city came to life before her eyes.

  They visited Buckingham Palace and the famous Tower where two young princes had once been imprisoned. They took a ride on a double-decker bus, which thrilled Leila since she’d never been on public transport before. They went to galleries and museums and saw some of the long-running West End shows.

  He showed her a ‘secret’ London too—a side to the city known only to the people who lived in it. Restaurants with flower-filled courtyards which were tucked away behind industrial grey streets and intimate concert halls where he took her to hear exquisite classical music.

  And when they weren’t sightseeing they were having sex. Lots of it. Inventive, imaginative and mind-blowing sex, which left her gasping and breathless with pleasure every time. She told herself she was lucky—and when she was kissing her gorgeous new husband, she felt lucky.

  But while she couldn’t fault the packed schedule Gabe had arranged for her, sometimes it felt as if she were spending time with a tour guide. Sometimes he was so...distant. So...forbidding. She would ask him questions designed to understand him better. And he would find a million ways not to answer them. He would change the subject and ask her about growing up in Qurhah. And although he seemed genuinely interested in her life as a princess, sometimes he made her feel as if she was a brand new project he was determined to get right.

  He remained as enigmatic as he’d done right from the very beginning. She had married a man who kept his thoughts and feelings concealed and inevitably, that made anxiety start to bubble away beneath the glossy surface of her new life.

  It was only during sex that she ever felt on the brink of a closeness which constantly eluded her. When he was making love he sometimes looked down at her, his face raw with passion and his eyes flaring with pewter fire. She wanted him to tell her what it was that kept him so firmly locked away from her. She wanted to look within his heart and see what secrets it revealed. But as soon as his orgasm racked his powerful body, she could sense him distancing himself again.

  Oh, he would hold her tightly and bury his lips against her damp skin and tell her that she was amazing. Once he even told her that she was the best lover he’d ever had. But to Leila, his words seemed empty and she was scared to believe them. As if he was saying them because he knew he ought to say them, rather than because he meant them.

  She would lie there hugging her still-trembling body while he went off to take a shower, forcing herself to remember that she was only here because of the life growing inside her. A life so new that sometimes it didn’t seem as if it were real...

  One morning they were lying amid a tumble of sex-scented sheets after a long and satisfying night of lovemaking, when she rolled onto her stomach and looked at him.

  ‘You know, you’ve never even told me how you made your fortune.’

  He stretched out his lean, tanned body and yawned. ‘It’s a dull story.’

  ‘Every story has a point of interest.’

  He looked at her. ‘Why do you ask so many questions, Leila? You’re always digging, aren’t you?’

  She met his cool gaze. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t keep asking if you actually tried answering some of them for a change.’

  She could see the wariness in his eyes, but for once she refused to be silenced or seduced into changing the subject. Even if their marriage wasn’t ‘real’ in the way that Sara and Suleiman’s was—didn’t her position as his wife give her some kind of right to know? To find out whether, beneath that cool facade, Gabe Steel had a few vulnerabilities of his own?

  ‘So tell me,’ she murmured and dropped a kiss on his bare shoulder. ‘Go on.’

  Gabe sighed as he felt her soft lips brushing against his skin. He had never planned to marry her. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. Reluctantly, he had taken what he considered to be the best course of action in circumstances which could have ruined her. He had done the right thing by her. Yet instead of showing her gratitude by melting quietly into the background and making herself as unobtrusive as possible, she had proved a major form of distraction in ways he had never anticipated.

  From the moment she opened her eyes in the morning to the moment those long black lashes fluttered to a close at night, she mesmerised him in all kinds of ways.

  The way she rose naked from the rumpled sheets—a tall, striking Venus with caramel skin and endless legs. The reverse-heart swing of her naked bottom as she wiggled it out of the room. The way she slanted him that blue-eyed look, which instantly had his blood boiling with lust.

  But he knew that women often mistook a man’s lust for love; and that lust always faded. In the normal scheme of things, that wouldn’t matter, but with Leila it did. He couldn’t afford to let her fall in love with him and have the all too predictable angry outcome when she realised it wasn’t ever going to be reciprocated. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want her to start thinking that he could feel things, like other men did. She was the mother of his child and she wasn’t going anywhere. He might not have wanted to become a father, but he was going to make damned sure that this baby was an enduring part of his life. Which he guessed was why he found himself saying, ‘W
hat exactly do you want to know?’

  ‘Tell me how you first got into advertising,’ she said. ‘Surely that’s not too difficult.’

  ‘Look it up on the internet,’ he said.

  ‘I already have.’ She remembered how she’d checked him out before that fateful meeting in Simdahab. ‘And although there’s lots of stuff about you winning awards and riding motorbikes and being pictured with some of the world’s most beautiful women—there’s not much in the way of background. Almost as if somebody had been controlling how much information was getting out there.’ She stroked her finger down his cheek. ‘Is that down to you, Gabe?’

  ‘Of course it is.’ His response was economical. ‘I’m sure your brother controls information about himself all the time.’

  ‘Ah, but my brother is a sultan who rules an empire and has a lot of enemies. What’s your excuse?’

  She saw the flicker of irritation which crossed his face—a slightly more exaggerated irritation than the look she’d seen yesterday when he’d discovered a dirty coffee cup sitting on the side of his pristine bathtub and acted as if it were an unexploded bomb.

  ‘My excuse is that I try to remain as private as possible,’ he said. ‘But I can see that you’re not going to let up until you’re satisfied. Where shall I begin?’

  ‘Were you born rich?’

  ‘Quite the opposite. Dirt poor, as they say—though I doubt whether someone like you has any comprehension of what that really means.’

  His accusation rankled almost as much as his attitude, and Leila couldn’t hide her hurt. ‘You think because I was born in a palace that I’m stupid? That I have no idea what the vast majority of the world is like? I’m surprised at you, Gabe—leaping to stereotypical judgements like that.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m an advertising man,’ he said, a smile curving the edges of his mouth. ‘And that’s what we do.’

  ‘I think I can work out what dirt poor means. I’m just interested to know how you went from that to...’ the sweeping gesture of her hand encompassed the vast dimensions of the dining room, with its expensive view of the river ‘...well, this.’

  ‘Fate. Luck. Timing.’ He shrugged. ‘A mixture of all three.’

  ‘Which as usual tells me precisely nothing.’

  He levered himself up against the pillows, his gaze briefly resting on the hard outline of her nipples. He felt the automatic hardening of his groin, wondering if that sudden flare of colour over her cheeks meant that she’d noticed it, too.

  ‘I left school early,’ he said. ‘I was sixteen, with no qualifications to speak of, so I moved to London and got a job in a big hotel. I started in the kitchens—’ He fixed her with a mocking look as he saw her eyes widen. ‘Does it shock my princess to realise that her husband was once a kitchen hand?’

  ‘What shocks this particular princess is your unbelievable arrogance,’ she said quietly, ‘but I’m enjoying the story so much that I’m prepared to overlook it. Do continue.’

  She saw another brief flicker of sexual excitement in his eyes, but quickly she dragged the cotton sheet up to cover her breasts. She didn’t want him seducing her into silence with his kisses.

  ‘I didn’t stay in the kitchens very long,’ he said. ‘I gravitated to the bar where the buzz was better and the tips were good. A big crowd of guys from a nearby advertising agency used to come in for drinks every Friday night—and they used to fascinate me.’

  She stared at him. ‘Because?’

  For a moment, Gabe didn’t answer because it was a long time since he’d thought about those days and those men. He remembered the ease with which they’d slipped credit cards from the pockets of their bespoke suits. He remembered their artful haircuts and the year-round tans which spoke of winter sun—at a time in his life when he’d never even had a foreign holiday.

  ‘I wanted to be like them,’ he said, in as candid an admission as he’d ever made to anyone. ‘It seemed more like fun than work—and I felt I was owed a little fun. They would sit around and brainstorm and angst if they were short of creative ideas. They didn’t really notice me hanging around and listening. They used to talk as if I wasn’t there.’ And hadn’t it been that invisibility which had spurred him on—even more than his determination to break free from the poverty and heartbreak which had ended his childhood so abruptly? The sense that they had treated him like a nothing and he’d wanted to be someone.

  ‘They had a deadline looming and a slogan for a shampoo ad which still hadn’t been written,’ he continued. ‘I made a suggestion—and I remember that they looked at me as if I’d just fallen to earth. Some teenage boy with cheap shoes telling them what they should write. But it was a good suggestion. Actually, it was a brilliant suggestion—and they made me a cash offer to use it. The TV campaign went ahead using my splash line, the product flew off the shelves and they offered me a job.’

  He remembered how surprised they’d been when he had coolly negotiated the terms of his contract, instead of snatching at their offer, which was what they’d clearly expected. They’d told him that his youth and his inexperience gave him no room for negotiation, but still he hadn’t given way. He had recognised that he had a talent and that much was non-negotiable. It had been his first and most important lesson in bargaining—to acknowledge his own self-worth. And they had signed, as he had known all along they would do.

  ‘Then what happened?’

  Gabe shrugged as her soft words floated into his head and tangled themselves up with his memories. He had often wondered about the particular mix of ingredients which had combined to make him such a spectacular success, yet the reasons were quite simple.

  He was good with words and good with clients. A childhood spent honing the art of subterfuge had served him well in the business he had chosen. His rise to the top had been made with almost seamless ease. His prediction that digital technology was the way forward had proved unerringly correct. He had formed his own small company and before long a much bigger agency had wanted to buy his expertise. He had expanded and prospered. He’d discovered that wealth begot wealth. And that being rich changed nothing. That you were still the same person underneath, with the same dark and heavy heart.

  ‘I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,’ he said dismissively, because thoughts of the past inevitably brought with them pain. And he tried not to do pain. Didn’t he sometimes feel that he’d bitten off his allotted quota of the stuff, all in one large and unpalatable chunk? He gave her a long, cool look. ‘So if the interrogation is over, Leila, you might like to think about what you want to do today.’

  Leila stiffened, her enjoyment of his story stifled by the sudden closure in his voice. Was this what all men did with women? she wondered as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and grabbed a tiny T-shirt and a pair of panties. Tell them just enough to keep them satisfied, but nothing more than that? Keep them at arm’s length unless they were making love to them?

  But she knew all this, didn’t she? None of these facts should have surprised her. She’d seen the way her father had treated her mother. She’d seen how quickly women became expendable once their initial allure had worn off. So why the hell was she grasping at rainbows which didn’t exist?

  She tugged on the T-shirt and pulled on her panties before walking towards the window, suddenly unenthusiastic about the day ahead.

  ‘Why don’t you surprise me?’ she said flatly. ‘Since you’re the man with all the ideas.’

  She didn’t hear the footfall of his bare feet straight away. She didn’t even realise he was following her until his shadow fell over her and she turned round to meet the tight mask of his face. She could see the smoulder of sexual hunger in his eyes, but she could see the dark flicker of something else, too.

  ‘What kind of surprise do you want, Leila?’

  She could feel the beat of sexual te
nsion as it thrummed in the air around them. He was angry with her for probing, she realised—and his anger was manifesting itself in hot waves of sexual desire. She told herself that she should walk away from him and that might make him realise that sometimes he treated her more like an object than a person. But she couldn’t walk away. She didn’t want to. And didn’t they both want exactly the same thing? The only thing in which they were truly compatible...

  She met the smoulder of his gaze and let the tip of her tongue slide along her bottom lip. ‘If I tell you then it won’t be a surprise, will it?’

  ‘My, how quickly you’ve learnt to flirt,’ he observed softly, his eyes following the movement hypnotically. ‘My little Qurhahian virgin hasn’t retained much of her innocence, has she?’

  ‘I sincerely hope not,’ she returned, ‘because a wife who lacks sexual adventure will quickly lose her allure. The women of the harem learn that to their peril.’

  Her assertion seemed to surprise him, for his eyes narrowed in response. His gaze drifted down to where the tiny T-shirt strained over her aching nipples.

  ‘You are dressed for sex,’ he said huskily.

  She tilted her chin. ‘I’m hardly dressed at all.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  He took a step towards her and backed her into the sitting room towards the L-shaped sofa which dominated one side of the room, and Leila felt excited by the dark look on his face, which made him appear almost savage.

  She could feel the leather of the sofa sticking to her bare thighs as he pushed her down on it, and her heart began to hammer in anticipation.

  ‘Gabe?’ she said, because now he was kneeling on the ground in front of her and pulling her panties all the way down.

  But he didn’t answer. He was too busy parting her knees and moving his head between them and, although this was not the first time he had done this, it had never felt quite so intense before.

  ‘Gabe,’ she said again, more breathlessly this time as his tongue began to slide its way up towards the molten ache between her legs.